thats unfortunate (prices). i thought it was cheaper. my bro was bringing stuff in from cali, paying around 1-2 grand a pound from growers and selling quarter pounds in NYC for the same price, quadrupling his profit. AND, he was paying extra, according to the growers he was buying from, because they knew he was selling it in NY. i heard from people that you can get 8ths of killer bud from dispensaries for $35-$40, and that ounces from brokers and growers of great stuff can be as low as $200.
here in NY, you get .8g for $20 from low-volume dealers (that carry one strain in little baggies) or between 2.5-3g for $80 from the high-class high-volume delivery services (that have strict security protocol and confidentiality, but come within 1hr of calling with 10+ different strains perfectly manicured and preserved in little plastic cubes). New yorkers dont do eights, they do dollar bill denominations until you get to over a half-ounce - that way you always pay the same but get different quantities depending on the strain.
sounds like you dont have a kief grinder/collector. you need to get one. The grinder is on top, and screws onto a bottom piece which is a mesh with a little collector dish under it. the ground weed falls through holes onto the mesh where it is collected. the kief/pollen falls through the mesh onto the dish. after grinding up an ounce or so, you get a nice amount of kief on that dish. just scrape and smoke.
imho, alchohol extraction is not a good idea as it is very difficult to completely evaporate off without heating it and therefore destroying the active ingredients. isopropyl is very bad for your health to consume, and often companies add things to the isopropyl like bittering agents so people wont drink it - which causes anything you extract with it to taste like earwax. if your shit gunks up, you can soak it, but dont use the stuff that comes off. plus, THC degrades with time, especially once it's broken out of the trichrome (that black/brown gunk? thats burst trichrome oils smeared around and oxidized). you're more likely to get dizzy smoking that old stuff than actually get high. it's like smoking two year old brick weed that traveled the country in a car tire.
dont bother with a pollen press. i have a better method, if you have kief:
get a reynolds oven bag (the kind for baking chicken, or using in a vaporizer). cut off a corner, and stuff the kief into that corner, then wrap up the corner of the bag with the kief inside into a tight little package and tape it with masking tape (dont use other tape! it will melt!). you might want to wrap an extra layer of oven bag around that, just to be safe. then, wrap one or two layers of paper towels or newspaper soaked in water around that little package. place the package on a stone or metal flat surface (countertop is perfect). take a clothing iron, and set it to medium-low. once it has heated up, turn the iron off and use it to press down on the package with all of your body weight for a few seconds. do not let the iron sit on the package for more than a few seconds at a time. repeat a few times, while letting the iron cool down. the water prevents the keif from heating up too much and the bag from melting. make sure you use an oven bag or it will melt no matter what. the heat makes the kief sticky and pliable, which then allows you to compress it into a nice package easier. once you've pressed the package a few times, unwrap the paper towel from the baggie and put the baggie in your freezer for a few min. after it's sufficiently cooled, it's not longer sticky and you can unwrap your piece of hash from the oven bag. it should be a very thin wafer. you can fold that wafer and repeat the process if you want to make it thicker.
the above method is very similar to the traditional method of compressing keif into hash. in morocco, they use a pneumatic press that can exert tons of pressure. pressure equals heat. take away some pressure, just compensate with added heat and you get the same result.
another thing, if you decide to grow in your closet, make sure you have ventilation in there. it a common mistake amatuers make. they think if they stick a plant in a closet with a light it will grow. not true. they need fresh air and plenty of Co2. you need to get a vent sucking in air from the outside (or a co2 tank) along with a vent that sucks air out of the closet and expels it outside but not before purifying it with either a carbon filter or ozone, or both (you cant have neighbors smelling your plants, legal or not)
i must agree, banana is the shiznit. a delivery service had some recently, imported from cali. prob in my top 10 of all time.
btw i feel you regarding brain chemistry. I smoked too much too often for too long a while ago (like an 8th or more every day for four years, wake&bake every day) and i started getting major panic attacks. i couldn't handle smoking anything for a few months, and then when i finally was able to smoke again i had to start off smoking low-grade because one hit of anything good would send me into an acid-like trip and panic attack. If you're on tricyclics or trazadone, you may also have some issues. Still, with certain strains i can get that way. Super silver haze does that to me, as does jack herrer and nebula. I had the same problem with opiates too. i was addicted once to oxy, but cleaned up years ago. whenever i take any opiate now, it's the same thing that you describe. I cant sit still, i cant get comfortable, i'm anxious and on edge. i think it's just you're body saying "no more! i've had enough!".
